How We Meet Our Spouses

As 'How I Met Your Mother' ends, here are the real-life lessons of Ted's romantic odyssey

What should we learn from Ted Mosby's misadventures in love and dating on "How I Met Your Mother"? Author Maura Kelly answers this question on Lunch Break. Photo: CBS Broadcasting, Inc

By

Maura Kelly

March 27, 2014 11:25 a.m. ET

On Monday night, Ted Mosby, the hero of the long-running CBS sitcom "How I Met Your Mother," will finally meet his future wife. Over the series' nine seasons, Ted (whose unseen older incarnation offers off-screen narration to frame the episodes) has been telling his two kids the long, intricate story of his romantic odyssey—replete with misfires, coincidences and perhaps the hand of fate. Having spent his 20s and early 30s as a single architect in Manhattan, almost but not quite crossing paths with his beloved, Ted (played by Josh Radnor) is now poised to meet the mother of his children (introduced this season, at last, in the doe-eyed form of actress Cristin Milioti).

Sitcoms aren't exactly social science, of course, but what should we learn from Ted's adventures? How do Americans actually meet their spouses?

Nearly 30% of straight couples meet the old-fashioned way, according to a 2012 study led by Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld: through their friends. That has been the leading means of meeting a spouse since World War II—so Ted had a point in boring his kids with so much detail about the lives of the show's supporting cast.

Why do social circles exert such influence over the life partners we meet? "Friends are the people we are closest to, the people we spend the most time with as adults, and therefore the people most likely to introduce us to others that we might be interested in," says Dr. Rosenfeld. And since Americans now marry later than ever before, they are more likely to be living with friends (rather than parents) when searching for a spouse.

Unlike Ted, many Americans meet their spouses at work. That phenomenon only took off around 1960, when women entered the labor force in larger numbers. About 10% of Americans who found spouses between 2005 and 2009 met at the office or through co-workers, according to Dr. Rosenfeld—down from around 20% in 1990.

Why the decline? In part: the Internet, which "has partly displaced not only family and school but also neighborhood, friends and the workplace as venues for meeting partners," Dr. Rosenfeld writes. He found that close to one-fourth of Americans now make initial contact with their spouses online. The dating site Match.com launched in April 1995. A year and a half later, it had 100,000 users; today, it has 1.9 million. A 2013 study by the Pew Research Internet Project found that about four in 10 U.S. adults who were single and looking had tried a dating site or app. (Of course, watching Mr. Radnor clicking on OkCupid profiles would be pretty dull TV.)

Ted turns out to be fairly typical in other ways, however. He believes there is a soul mate out there for everyone—as do nearly 80% of Americans under 45, according to a 2011 Marist poll. He's had plenty of sexual partners along the way (if not nearly as many as his goatish, womanizing "bro" Barney, played by fan favorite Neil Patrick Harris). Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that most men between 25 and 44 have had six partners; most women that age have had four.

And like Ted, today's young adults aren't marrying early either. A recent Pew report on millennials—the generation born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s—found that only 26% of those aged 18 to 33 are now married. Compare that to the 36% of Generation X members who were hitched at those ages—and to nearly half of the Boomers.

Though the leads of "How I Met Your Mother" are likely to end the series coupled off, many Americans aren't so lucky. "Most demographers believe that about 15% of Americans will never marry, up from only 5% in the 1950s and early 1960s," says Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History." And about half of those who married in 2012 will eventually divorce, according to sociologist Philip Cohen of the University of Maryland.

So that's marriage today. What about tomorrow? Ted's kids will probably be telling stories about the wonders of technology. Though a 2013 Pew study indicated that just 3% of adults had tried dating apps such as Tinder, that number is bound to grow.

More futuristically: Online daters may soon be matched through third-party data that shows where they socialize and shop, says Kenneth Cukier, co-author of a new book about Big Data. The strongest predictor of compatibility, he adds, "might be something we don't expect, like the time of day you make your purchases."

Try making a sitcom about that.

—Ms. Kelly, a former staff writer for Glamour, is the author of "Much Ado About Loving: What Our Favorite Novels Can Teach You About Date Expectations, Not-So-Great Gatsbys and Love in the Time of Internet Personals."

i may not be able to find a soul mate online, but i can find source data online. haha....

to answer common questions about differences between men and women, someone at the CDC has thought of some answers:

"The occurrence of extreme values in the reporting of numbers of sexual partners—for example, a small proportion of men or women may be reporting extremely high numbers, and these values will skew the means and possibly the median values if the proportions of men reporting higher numbers of partners are sufficiently large compared with women—as seen in the 2002 and 2006–2008 [survey]."

"Variations in what different groups of respondents may include in their counts of sexual partners, perhaps defined by the type of sexual activity involved, the duration or type of relationship, and concurrency with other partners."

"Overreporting by men and underreporting by women may accentuate the gender disparity despite all efforts to improve the accuracy of this self-reported, sensitive information."

"The possibility that survey respondents are reporting sexual partners outside the sample frame of [the survey, including] partners outside the general U.S. household population (for example, prison, military, homeless, commercial sex workers, partners in other countries)."

Friends are not "the people we spend the most time with as adults," at least for those who are employed (and wish to remain so). That place would be taken by coworkers. Also, it is very questionable whether those who are younger today would indeed be living with friends rather than parents, as the trends is to return home after college, a natural consequence of the moribund economic circumstances of those coming to adulthood in a nation in decline.

That the rate at which people find mates through work has halved probably cannot be entirely explained by the internet, either. That did not also halve the other alternatives. There are probably other factors at play, such as bans upon relationships between coworkers, more easily enforced in this era of absolute employer power thanks to job market conditions, and the reduction in the workforce participation rate of males.

I did the online dating for a few years. One of the more interesting one's...while chatting online, I had one woman ask me....What size company do you work for? What is your title? How many people work under you? We never did meet. I guess I wasn't high enough in the company for her.

I am always amazed at how couples meet. When you look at all the events, that had to happen and all the mistakes that could have been made. What if one of you got sick that night, you were suppose to meet? What if there was a miscommunication.....a change of mind....someone or something prevented you from meeting. I think it's almost a miracle people actually meet and match up. I'm still single, and it's a mystery to me.

To borrow from our former scandalous president, slick willie....it all depends on the meaning of the word "is"......also "I didn't have sex with that women" means that oral sex resulting in climaxing on a blue dress and vaginal penetration with a cigar doesn't count as sex....

Can somebody explain to me how men can have more sexual partners than women do? It's takes two to tango, right? So, either:-- Men are hooking up with a small proportion of really promiscuous women who never get surveyed. (Too busy?)-- Men are having homosexual relationships -- Women are underestimating-- Men are overestimating.What am I missing?

"Most demographers believe that about 15% of Americans will never marry, up from only 5% in the 1950s and early 1960s," says Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History."Broad statistics are meaningless. Educated and intelligent people care for their children's upbringing much more so than lower class people whose actions and neglect skew the numbers heavily and have kids who never know both parents, let alone one and know nothing of their history.

Marriage rates will continue declining. Very little meaningful research is done into the incentives and disincentives of marriage. That is because most of the research simply ignores those factors as they relate to men. When good research is finally done that factors in men as well, people will be shocked by the results.

I am surprised that the proportion of people who marry who claimed to have met at work isn't a lot higher. I've read on these pages about the "Office Wife" where people work closely together and apparently accomplishing good work. At work people are usually on their better behavior so as to be attractive to the other sex without really trying.

My wife and I were introduced by a mutual friend who conjured up his little plot without either of us knowing. This guy was not the sensitive, matchmaker type by any stretch of the imagination, but he decided we'd be attracted to each other so he took the shot to see what would happen. Long story short: We fell head over heels in love, almost at first sight. To the absolute shock of our friends & family she moved into my NYC apartment 30 days later and we've been madly in love and happily married for 35 years. Our life together is life itself. Not for everyone, but when it works it's magic.

"And about half of those who married in 2012 will eventually divorce, according to sociologist Philip Cohen of the University of Maryland." This is a misstatement. Half of marriages end in divorce, but it's due to 15-20% of married couples who keep getting divorced and remarried. Most people who marry don't get divorced.

Underestimating/overestimating is certainly likely. But such statistics are also skewed by the fact that they do not represent the sexual behavior of all people, but only of those people who are willing to reveal their sexual behavior to a researcher. The statistics cannot (absent forced, accurate, reporting of sexual behavior, which is not going to happen) represent the full population.

Simple. There are a relatively small number of women who have sex with a lot of men. There are a lot of women who have sex with very few. And there are a very small number of men who have sex with a phenomenal number of people.

> Mike Van Horn Replied:> I do not see your Rule #4. How can this possibly work?

Let's go back to the article.

> Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate> that most men between 25 and 44 have had six partners;> most women that age have had four.

Got it? He didn't say males on average had six partners and woman on average had four. It's a very, very fuzzy statement. When you read "most" you assumed "average" when that's not the case. The exact definition is not supplied.

If we assume the author is precise with language, then we can assume that most might mean 80 percent (of males or females) and to have a partner means to have at least that many partners. That would work...

*** or ***

We could assume that most means the mode of the statistical distribution. That's the narrow band (one increment) with the highest number (the peak).

Either way there are three things to remember.

1) The distribution is skewed (to the right) meaning a small number are getting the most action,

2) In a skewed distribution, the mean is not equal to the median is not equal to the mode, and

3) Men and women think and act differently.

You are correct that the means should be the same - assuming the definition of a "partner" is the same for the sexes (which I am betting it isn't), everyone is telling the truth (which they don't.), and the tendency to over- vs. under-exaggerate is the same for the sexes (which it isn't).

Man has sex with a woman. They each have one sexual partner.Same man has sex with another woman. The man has had two sexual partners. Each woman has had one.Same man has sex with a third woman. Man: 3. Women: 1 each.

These numbers have been different ever since McKinsey started surveying about sexual behavior. And as someone who works with data for a living, I have to say that the pattern is too consistent for there to be some kind of selection bias or nonrandom sampling.

Rule number 1 - This is reported rather than objective data. As such, a man's "home run" may be a woman's "third base".

Rule number 2 - People lie about sex.

Rule number 3 - See Rule number 2.

Rule number 4 - We're talking about averages, and the distributions involved are not Gaussian (bell curve). Instead - like Pareto's observation with income distribution - they are highly skewed. A safe bet is that 20 percent of the population is getting most of the action. Thus percentile bands or a median number (the 50th percentile) would better represent reality. The degree to which the distribution is skewed may be very different between men and women. This then would explain why the averages are different.

Anyhow... fun stuff to talk about amongst the sexes over a few drinks. :-)

The work place is a high risk dating area for men. If for what ever reason (read the signals wrong, she found a better offer, just a bad day for her, ... ) she objects he will be hit with a sexual harassment suit and may loose his job. As SNL said in their sexual harassment education joke, "Be attractive. Don't be unatractive."

you are older.work was much more sociable before mid 1990 with outsourcing, technology replacement, internet etc. When I think about starting in 1980 w/company softball teams, happy hours, people sitting in office talking about the "big game", etc was the norm. Now things are so rigidly controlled people are veritable strangers at work. No talk about kids, politics, etc.. Very sad but who could meet in the new environment. Most i know in 80's married co workers...now very rare

Mike, now add in one or two prostitutes. A number of the men will pay her for sex, and when asked probably include her in their counts for survey purposes. And then realize that the survey intentionally ignores prostitutes as outliers not representative of typical behaviors.

Don't get wrapped around the axle on the mathematical impossibility here. Don;t trip up over your internal demands to explain the mean.

It's a survey. The statement references one bin in the survey histogram, and fudges with the word "most". And people lie on surveys...it doesn't necessarily say people had sex, just that people reported having sex.

Here's a thought experiment: Make a table of some large number (10?, 100?, 1000?) of men in one column and the same number of women in a second column. Give them names or numbers. Let's do 10 of each: Adam, Bob, Charlie, Dave, and 6 more; and Abby, Bev, Charlize, Debbie, and 6 more. Draw lines from each man's name to the names of all the women he's had sex with. It might be that Adam has lines drawn to the names of 6 women, whereas Debbie has lines connected to only 4 men. If you work this out with all the people in the list, you will discover a few things:1. There are the same total number of connections to men and to women.2. You cannot find any way to have 6 "sex" lines connecting to each man, but only 4 to each woman. 3. You'll discover that if Adam is having more sex, then Bob is having less.4. This works the same whether you're tracking sexual partners or each time they have sex.

It should be obvious in this experiment that the mean number of sexual partners is the same for men and women. But you may be surprised to discover that if some men are having more sexual partners than others, that the median number of sexual partners for men actually goes down. If Adam is getting all the action, then Bob, Charlie, and Dave pull down the median.

Given that the number of men and women is about equal, in your example there must be two men that have had no sex. So if some men are having more sex partners than women, then other men are having few or no sex partners. Even though one man has three sex partners and the other two have none, on average each man has one sex partner.

I do not see your Rule #4. How can this possibly work? Ignoring homosexual relationships, every time a man has sex, so does a woman. Regardless of percentiles, who gets laid the most, who is abstinent, or whatever. Show me a way that it diverges from 50/50.

IMHO you are spot on. I have seen careers ruined because the guy was “perceived” as sexually harassing (asked her for a date, phone number, sent an email etc.) at work. In one case the guy was transferred to another office (100 miles away) because the young lady could not function at work (he refused to marry her). Interesting it was always the guy that took the hit. The result of this environment is most of the young men now look at female coworkers as sharks to be avoided. The simple allegation of “being too friendly” is often the kiss of death to a developing career.

For my wife and I, a bump into each other in a beauty salon - 41 years ago

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